Tag Archives: Abortion

What a week to be in a self-absorbed cocoon. While I was getting beaten, bruised, and strained in the act of moving, quite a week was going on out there. I don’t know how to rank this stuff, most of it is so bad, so the Sassy Sundries will be back next week.

Thanks to the militancy of the National Rifle Association, an insane young man was able to purchase guns and ammunition and shoot up his school. Somehow I don’t think that the Founders envisioned the kinds of arms we have available today when they introduced the right for states to raise militias into the Constitution. It angers me beyond belief that this tragedy could have been averted, if only our society would take both mental health and gun control more seriously.

While media outlets have been airing poignant portraits of the individuals killed in the Virginia Tech shooting, some two hundred Iraqis died in suicide bombings this week. This surge simply isn’t working. As Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has said, we can’t win this war militarily. But our Decider-in-Chief insists that surging will win the Global War on Terror. Guess we better trust him then.

The Decider steadfastly stood by his man in the hall of justice, despite his demonstrated incompetence and deceitfulness. Even his Republican allies castigated Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s performance at his hearing yesterday. How can a guy who graduated from Harvard Law forget so much? Let’s hope Gonzales, who argues that the Constitution does not actually contain the right to Habeas Corpus and that the Geneva Conventions rules outlawing torture are “quaint” and outdated, will soon be left to the dustbin of history.

One of the chief architects of the Iraq War and pal of the Decider Paul Wolfowitz vowed as head of the World Bank to go after corruption. Guess he never thought that anyone would find out that he stashed his girlfriend in the State Department and arranged for her to get sweet promotions and even sweeter paychecks. It must be nice to have the head of the World Bank as your sugar daddy.

The Bush-packed Supreme Court decided this week that women don’t have rights over their own bodies. Roberts and Alito ruled with Scalia, Thomas, and Kennedy that despite expert medical opinion, that banning the so-called “partial birth abortion” was just fine. The dilation and extraction procedure (and potentially, due to the bill’s vague language, some second-trimester abortion procedures) is never, ever necessary, even if the mother’s life is at stake, because these guys said so.

I think I’ll try to repair my self-absorbed cocoon and see if I can’t get back in it. This is just too much.